Pool Boiling of Mixtures for Electronics Thermal Management

Electrical and chemical compatibility requirements of electronic components pose significant constraints on the choice of liquid coolants. These constraints have led to the use of fluoroinerts and Novec liquids as coolants, which are plagued by significantly lower thermal conductivity, specific heat, and latent heat of vaporization compared to water, and also a number of these chemicals have significant environmental impact. These factors necessitate the development of new heat transfer fluids with improved heat transfer properties and applicability. Mixture formulations provide an avenue for enhancing the properties of existing heat transfer fluids. These can be tuned for specific applications. Mixture formulations of Novec fluid (HFE 7200) with alcohols and ethers (HFE 7200 and methanol; HFE 7200 and ethoxybutane) are considered in this study. A 1 cm × 1 cm Silicon (Si) sample having copper nanowire arrays is used as the test surface for pool boiling. Experiments are done under saturated conditions and also at different sub-cooled conditions to investigate the thermal performance of these new fluid mixtures. Pool boiling heat transfer performance and the critical heat flux are measured for fluid mixtures and compared with the corresponding base fluid. From the pool boiling experiments, it was observed that adding methanol to pure HFE 7200 enhances the CHF of the resulting mixture and adding ethoxybutane to pure HFE 7200 reduces the incipience temperature for boiling.